This is possibly the lamest idea I've ever seen. Why would I give someone else credits? The only point is to trade them in for gifts, so I might as well just spend the points to buy gifts directly. Or, even better, just buy real gifts in the real world.
Is this Facebook's monetization strategy - turning the news feed into a pachinko parlor where a few content producers get worthless facebook currency (and facebook makes money on purchases of said worthless currency)?
Facebook has a large enough audience where they don't have to simply appeal to people with your level of intellect to generate meaningful revenue from a product/service. There are tons and tons of people who love wasting time with silly things such as this. We don't know if there are enough of those people to make this useful, but dismissing it outright isn't particularly productive.
It's like they took a credible micropayment system, but decided to make all the micropayments entirely worthless. If you could cash out accumulated "credits" for real money, or earn "credits" for something more substantial than status updates (who's going to micropay you for a status update?), or even spend micropayments on something that's actually useful, it might be the start of an idea.
I thought this was going to be about Zuckerberg admitting that he beat out far superior products in the early stages for no other reason than starting at Harvard, and having a couple journalists in his pocket. Then I read the title more closely and realized I'd missed the word you.
Do you have any clue what you're talking about? Some of the smartest, most talented people in our industry have helped turn Facebook what it is today -- THAT'S why it's a success. People like Adam D'Angelo (who almost single-handedly created the real-time engine that is driving a lot of Facebook's new stuff, along with the architecture that allowed them to scale) and Aaron Sittig (who created the Mac-like, user-friendly interface that has drawn in so many) are, on their own, geniuses; when combined as a unit, we can see that they have created a product that is appreciated by over 200 million people.
Mark has had his issues, sure; haven't we all? He was an awkward teenager, paranoid of others and obsessed with his own code. If you can't understand how someone like that would do what he did, you really haven't spent much time in the hacker scene.
I said: he beat out far superior products in the early stages for no other reason than starting at Harvard, and having a couple journalists in his pocket.
He got the talented people to work for him after the superior but less fortunate competitors had dropped away, and it was clear that Facebook was going to be the one left standing.
Is this Facebook's monetization strategy - turning the news feed into a pachinko parlor where a few content producers get worthless facebook currency (and facebook makes money on purchases of said worthless currency)?